Bow/Spear Javelin Build Guide (PvP)

Introduction & Disclaimers

• This is a PVP ONLY build. You will have very low DPS and survivability if you run this build in endgame PVE like expeditions, invasions, etc.

• It is recommended you watch PVP gameplay of this build first to see if it fits your playstyle before investing your time and money into it. (Gameplay at bottom of article).

• It is a very combo oriented build and is therefore not meant for fighting on chaotic points, as your combo will be interrupted by your teammates. If you enjoy 1v1's, 3v3's, and fighting outside of the point in OPR in mini skirmishes, then this build is for you. On top of that, it is a very solo friendly build.

• This build is also countered by other specific builds such as 4+ freedom and/or hatchet. 

While the bulk of this guide is going to be about BIS gear choices regarding this build, I will also provide 2 perk alternative gear choices for new and returning players, ultimately giving them a "Path to BIS". The best Heartrunes and Runeglass gems for this build will be included as well as a quick tutorial of the combo.

CC Burst Combo

While the build is very versatile, it all comes down to 1 combo:

Sweep - Vault Kick - Javelin - Explosive Shot

The versatility of this combo shines because the main burst of it is the Javelin and explosive shot part. Sweep and Vault Kick are only set ups. So the combo can start with vault kick if you miss your Sweep or if you miss your Vault Kick, you can still throw a good Javelin. The skill perk Sundering Javelin on your weapon rends the target by 26% for 10 seconds for the follow up Explosive Shot. Empowering Explosive Arrow then empowers your next hit shot by 19%, allowing you hit them with a final heavy/penetrating shot dealing upwards to 4-5k damage towards geared players.

What if Explosive Shot is on cooldown? You still have a Penetrating Shot and a normal arrow. Or if you need to be more mobile and closer to your target, then you can simply dodge and do a spear left click attack.

Attributes

310 Dexterity/200 Constitution. No exceptions here. The damage after 310 dexterity is negligible (<6%) compared to the utility you get with constitution. This isn't like other MMO's where you can go glass cannon and succeed due to huge diminishing returns. You will be at a disadvantage against anyone that has 200 constitution if you yourself don't have 200 constitution. 150 vs 200 constitution is an additional 10% damage reduction along with 1500 more HP, allowing you to receive more HP from health pots, mana pots, and regeneration pots, especially with divine.

And just for reference, the 50 Intelligence passive only affects random criticals and not 300 Dexterity forced criticals and headshots. The 50 Strength passive does not boost Bow damage.

Skill Tree

Gearing

Below is my everyday gear build that I use for most OPR's, Arenas, Open World 1vX, and 1v1's. It is a general all purpose build and is very modular in the sense that you can easily make changes to it based off your preferences.

Armor Perks

1. Resilient

Resilient is a mandatory perk for PVP. Without it, you will be 2-3 shot by nearly everyone. Every PVP build out there has either 4 or 5 Resilient.

But why 4 over 5?

4 Resilient with 150 Constitution puts you at 30% critical defense. Any weapon that has a 1.3 critical multiplier or less will do the same critical damage to you regardless of 4 Resilient or 5 Resilient. These critical multipliers can be seen when hovering over weapons. There are exceptions to this 1.3 critical multiplier rule though. Great axe for example has a talent increasing their critical damage by 10%. Dexterity has a passive increasing their random critical damage by 10% on CCed enemies (NOT headshot criticals and 300 Dexterity forced criticals). And finally Intelligence has a passive increasing their critical dmg by 10% (not headshots). Lastly, you're banking on your opponent not having Vicious of course, which is currently not a super meta perk. So in these situations, 5 Resilient provides better defense than 4 Resilient. Very situational though.

But then you have to account for what if you replace your 5th Resilient with another defensive perk to make up for these exceptions. For example, some mage weapons with the passive go above 1.3. Fire Staff for starters would be 1.35 (1.25+0.1). Would you rather have a 5th resilient to make Fire Staff criticals invalid, or instead get an Elemental Aversion in it's place to be straight up 3.9% tankier to ALL Fire Staffs attacks AND other elemental weapons like Blunderbuss where that 5th resilient wouldn't matter because of their low critical multiplier. Same logic applies to shirking fort if you choose to get that instead of aversion.

So simply having 4 Resilient with 1 Elemental Aversion/Shirking Fort will be better defense than 5 Resilient. It just benefits you more in general PVP where most people you encounter do not have vicious and more than half their attacks are not criticals above the 1.3 multiplier.

2. Refreshing Evasion

The reason you take refreshing evasion over refreshing is because you only care about bow cooldowns, as they are your main source of DPS. Your spear cooldowns are nothing to worry about since the skill tree has enough built in cooldown reduction over time.

You can calculate the efficiency of refreshing evasion by calculating the average of all your bow cooldowns.

As long as you dodge 4 or more times within 18 seconds with your bow out, then Refreshing Evasion is equal to or better than Refreshing. There are times you are going to dodge 8+ times within 18 seconds because of all the built in stamina this build has. If you take 5 Refreshing Evasion vs 5 Refreshing in this case, then that's a 30% cooldown reduction vs 15% cooldown reduction difference.

3. Skill Perks

Empowering Explosive Arrow is one of the most important skill perks for this build, as it what lets you reach near empower cap after the combo and finish off people with 4k+ Penetrating Shots (usually while they're running away or potting).

Energizing Evade Shot is most useful to increase distance against a melee player more efficiently and safely. If your Runeglass gems and skill tree passive both proc with it, then you're getting +29 stamina just from that one shot alone, which is lifesaving.

Shirking Energy is not a skill perk but is mandatory, even after the most recent nerf.

4. Defensive Perks

This is where your preference comes in. You can either choose to get 4 freedom, 4 elemental aversion, or 4 shirking fortification. I chose elemental aversion because ranged damage is often what hits me the most, and most ranged damage is either elemental or split elemental. Muskets, Mage Blunders, and some Bows are prime examples of this. And of course it reduces regular mage attacks and skills from Fire Staffs and Ice Gauntlets (besides Ice Spike). 4 Freedom is very niche and only useful against certain Spear and Hammer builds only. Shirking Fortification is a decent choice if you struggle against melee but is getting more and more nerfed every patch.

Jewelry Perks

1. Amulet

Health and Stamina Recovery is a must. I also consider Divine a must because it gets you an extra nearly 1k HP from health and mana pots combined. If that's too expensive for you, then some alternatives include Champion's Amulet (Shirking Empower instead of Divine) or simply having refreshing evasion instead of Divine (not recommended).

2. Ring

There's a new ring that came out with the Brimstone update that is a must have for any bow build. Thrust damage and Keen Awareness on a ring is an impossible combo to craft. It is better than Champion's Ring or any other Invigorated Punishment ring because that perk caps up to 6% damage for just skills (only counts haste, empower, and fortify). The Blood Letting on it also allows you to continuously stack multiple Keenly Jagged bleed on one target assuming you hit all your shots.

You can farm it here:

3. Earring

Refreshing Toast and Healthy Toast are mandatory. Mana Pots with Healthy Toast and Divine heal me up to 1.8k HP on only a 10 second cooldown. It is essentially equivalent to a second health pot. The third perk has some versatility. I go with Refreshing Evasion but others choose Regenerating. Nimble is obsolete because this game has enough built in stamina recovery that you often don't benefit from it anymore.

Weapon Perks

1. Attunement
Attunement is mandatory on nearly every weapon. Not much to say about it. 18% extra damage to all attacks including skills on only a 1 second cooldown.

2. Keenly Jagged

Keenly Jagged is a 13% bleed per second on Bow (built in empower) and the cooldown starts as soon as it procs, so it has 1 second of downtime. You also deal 10% extra dmg to bleeding targets with the Mark passive in the left tree AND the spear right tree keystone. It's the best perk for pure bow DPS, especially against targets that know how to dodge half your shots. Combined with the new 8% Runeglass DoT gem and you're basically hitting 2-3 bow shots with just one.

Keenly Empowered on the other hand has 5 seconds of downtime and 5 seconds of uptime. So you're not gonna have the extra damage 50% of the time at least. So it's just completely inferior

3. Vicious/Enchanted

Probably one of the most discussed perk rivalries in the game. In the past year, it's always been a 50/50 choice depending on your playstyle and preference. However, meta changes, perk changes, and new items have shifted it in the favor of Vicious. Most people these days are 4 resilient like me, which puts us at 30% total critical reduction with 150+ Constitution. Therefore, a 1.3 critical multiplier bow with Vicious now does exactly 12% more dmg with criticals. That 12% applies to 300 Dexterity forced criticals, headshots, skill headshots, skill RNG criticals, and normal attack RNG criticals. Therefore, it's safe to say more than half your damage are criticals. Meanwhile, enchanted is just a flat dmg increase to only your lights and heavies, which is rarely what our burst relies on anymore.

The original consensus was you use a:

• Vicious bow with a Keen Awareness ring due to the way the critical formula works
• Enchanted bow with a Thrust dmg ring and completely forget about criticals
  

But now... we have a new impossible ring combination with Keen Awareness AND Thrust damage (see above in Ring Section). So now you can have the best of both worlds, allowing the winner to finally be Vicious.

In no way am I saying enchanted is terrible now though. In certain situations, it is STILL better than Vicious (Ex. Bow vs Bow duels) or just duels in general involving 0 pots. But outside of that in real PVP like OPR, Arena, and Wars, Vicious is slightly ahead of enchanted.

Runeglass Gems

The 8% elemental DoTs are mandatory for both your weapons. Then you have 2 distinct build options:

1. Opal on weapons and +5 stamina per hit on your armor (Runeglass of Energizing). Paired with the +5 stamina per hit in the bow skill tree. (+5% ranged dmg is an alternative too). 

2. Elemental gems in your weapons matching your attunement and DoT. Then +10% elemental damage on your armor 

The upside of option 1 is your stamina game is much better and its a huge advantage against melee. For example, a well timed evade shot is gonna regain +29 stamina(+19+5+5). You also gain more benefit out of the new Thrust Damage + Keen Awareness ring than option 2.

The upside of option 2 is you are no longer countered by thrust gems and your overall damage is higher. You have versatility. HOWEVER, the meta is turning more into 50/50 physical/elemental defense split and a lot of people are running 4 elemental aversion with full onyx gems like me now. So if you rock option 2, you are now doing 16% less damage to these builds just like option 1, but without the Opal effect. Therefore, option 1 would be doing 12% extra damage to these builds.  On top of that, there's way less people running thrust gems now BECAUSE of builds like option 2 and that's really only option 2 shines against.

Heartrunes

The best heartrune for this build is Cunning Grasping Vines. The only thing Spear/Bow lacks in its kit is a root and this is the perfect solution for it. It is also a very good escape if you're getting swarmed by melee players. I chose cunning over the other two options because they debuff you way too much. 50% less stamina OR 20% less damage? Not worth it as a squishy light armor. You would be dead if you missed the vines.

The next best thing is Stalwart Stoneform as a last minute lifesaver. The heal is very strong and is a lifesaver in OPR or Arena if you have a bunch of melees chasing you down.

Here is some highlights that demonstrate the insanely helpful utility the vines give this build.

Gameplay

And finally here's some gameplay of the build. I've been using this build for countless months after many nerfs, buffs, and other changes. It's one of my two main builds on my channel along with bow/rapier. Consider subscribing if you want to see the build continue progressing throughout every new update and meta :D

NW.guide afterword

This article missed something? Did you get some comments?

Share it with us in Discord and talk directly with the author of the guide DeityVengy!

By the way, did you know that NW.Guide for New World is like Wowhead for WoW? Check the guide below to learn more!

What NW.Guide can do for Adventurer!